She’s in a puff, petal pink skirt,
gazing into the dark eyes of her reflection,
a reflection of guilt and solitude;
The studio is always quiet at this hour of the night,
where she unleashes the tortures of routine on the light, wood floor.
Up and down, up and down, the points of her shoes spin and flex,
twirling about a cold room in her puffy, petal pink skirt.
Conformity and virtue,
queerness and womanhood
amount to nothing in this world absolved of difference,
a ballet world of pretty girls in pretty skirts
she’s taught to not want;
Women in love with women, girls with crushes on girls
are not meant to be in this world.
Grieve the person she cannot be,
A studio full of small-framed girls on pointe,
in their puffy, petal pink skirts;
Uniform and pristine, lacking the love she hides,
for the one with hair interwoven into braids and a height taller than her;
Guilt for the hopeless love she has for this woman,
this woman with movements delicate and soft.
She’s in a puffy, petal pink skirt as she looks for
the clinging white shirt on the woman she loves;
No longer something she can hide,
she decides to resign
from the cold room and the light wood floor,
from the tortures of routine and pointe shoes,
from the world who refuses to accept her and her love.
My father and I sit side by side, turned toward the players:
they run warmup drills, one after another, waiting for the whistle.
Could it ever be any other way? The padded knees, the unmoving eye,
the squared chest, the wrist’s smooth turn, the waist, bending.
We point out the short players, their reflections marred
through scratched glass. The goalies twist, hiss at their stiff hips,
faces shut up behind their masks. “I wish I could skate like that,”
my father says. Our captain drifts back to the bench,
his helmet flipped up, his nose pink with chill. One lone curl
flattens against his neck, crushed. Do I know what my father means?
I have wanted to take that kind of space, move without effort,
like breath dancing through a lung.
We cannot reach each other; we have never sat so close.
My arms could hit the sideboard. His leg shakes, keeping unsteady time.
The game begins – a crush of motion. Men take shots, miss.
They fight on the rink, grab fistfuls of jersey, wrench each other
into the glass. It rattles. I flinch. I think, these men are undergraduates.
They have papers due at midnight. They have girlfriends or boyfriends;
they have had bad haircuts. They love or loved their mothers.
They fear or feared their fathers. Now, they line up in the penalty box
like school children waiting to be taken home. I forgive them
for their crimes, for their making of fists. My father’s fist was not a fist.
Do I forgive him? What are his crimes? I look at him looking away,
his chest stamped with the name of a school I do not pay to attend.
Two rows behind us, teenage girls are begging for something
to be done. Their team is down by one. We are winning. “Literally,
any time!” one girl pleads. “Just take the shot!” A defenseman takes his shot,
misses. Our goalie catches the puck in his glove, holds it up for the stands
to see. His image replicated on the screen: the victory made bigger,
the loss larger. Here’s what we took. Here’s what’s missing. The puck winks,
cold as stare, chipped as a shoulder. My father pats me on the back.
He will not read this poem. He will not hear its turn, its bend.
This is what I mean when I say, I want to move. I leave him here,
in the empty rink, the players carrying on with their game,
his back turned to me as he watches the ice scar.
It starts with a breaking in a glove, a sun rising on a misty
diamond. The tarp slowly peels back like a curtain
revealing an enchanting talent. The sand kicks up dust an
amalgamation of sweat, grit, and decomposing seeds
Right at the divide of winter and spring, a hole is filled with
anticipatory jitters and predictions and changes to rules.
Then money switches hands, someone mentions a trade,
and the currency exchanges to relative strangers.
It’s a lead off cannon shot slammed
into the stands, it’s bedlam at The Bank.
It’s the bell dancing with combined hopes
of the ants who can “move a rubber tree plant.”
until the momentum subsides and the bell
cracks the facade where you smile, and sigh,
and
sometimes stare off into a dream of red October
and series sweeps for victory before November.
Until the announcer summons you back from your
slumps with whoops of RBI and got him looking/
But somehow a zero vandalizes the scoreboard
where proof runs should be, and countless
Ks
stand proudly in their place under the other team’s pitcher.
So your mind fills with swears so imbued with anguish the
language would get a player thrown out. Still every day
you slump on the dull cushions fraying and graying
because even after years of fluctuating records tied
tight with emotion, devotion never wavers. Because
the city bleeds passion the fans diffuse, and your
organs run off aspirations and grand slams.